


1942

by klaviergavout



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Death, Gen, Happy Halloween guys, Introspection, i was going to make this spooky but heck i love sad and slightly introspective things, peter walter i deserves more fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 07:31:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8436841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klaviergavout/pseuds/klaviergavout
Summary: "Colonel Peter A. Walter I dies asleep in his mansion at age 78." That's what they say. That's what he knows.





	

Peter Walter had always wondered what it was like to die. Ever since the age of about five years old, when he'd accidentally flattened a garden snail beneath two clunky left feet and noticed a few days later that its corpse hadn't moved, the question had never really left him. He didn't think about death all the time, mind, he was just an inquisitive child. Always had been. Maybe that was why he eventually founded a leading robotics company and, well, other people didn't.

Death always seemed very dulled down to Peter Walter, such a quiet thing. In fact, everything did. His early life lacked the buzz of modern technology and any threat of war or conflict, and thus he lived in silence. Silence had never been to his liking. That was one of the reasons he loved machines, especially those of clockwork; there was that distinctive _noise_ of the gears and the engines and the motors that you could just lose yourself in, sink into, perpetual, _perfect._ The snail had made no such noise- a sickening crunch and it was gone. Thirty-one years later elephants wept and giants fell and human blood stained delicate sand, and he wondered why it sounded so familiar.

After that day, the thought of death was more prominent in his mind than anything. He saw for weeks his rival, his enemy, no, his friend, bleeding and injured and dying and _hurt_ and it was too hot too hot too _h o t_ and he cried for help but no one came, and when he came back to reality all he knew were warm hands wrapped round him and he could do nothing but clutch at Iris for dear life and wish he'd never gone to that stupid desert anyway.

Waving his robots off to war was hard the first time, but he didn't cry. He knew he had to stay strong for his family, his sons, his wife, who were all very much human and very much afraid. But the second time he waved them off he couldn't look them in the eyes. He knew technology was advancing and the power of three steam-powered automatons was only so much against the rest of the world. His sons were older and his wife still by his side. But would his steam man band make it? Would they, too, die martyrs for a cause that never was theirs to fight for? Peter would never admit it until drunk several years later, but that night, he had cried himself to sleep. Just like with the snail, he would add, smirking into his liquor.

Peter Walter had always wondered what it was like to die. And when the time came, minutes before he passed away, he swore that he could see Delilah there in front of him. She, however, looked different. Darker. Paler. Thinner. Almost otherworldly. She remained there, watched him from the foot of his bed, eyes on his own, almost questioning. It was silent. He didn't mind.

As he let himself drift off into a deep and peaceful sleep, he knew that this was death.

And he had never felt more _alive._


End file.
